


Peter Pan: A Faerie Tale

by SilvaraWilde



Category: Peter Pan - J. M. Barrie
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Angst, F/M, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-04-09
Updated: 2002-04-09
Packaged: 2017-12-14 11:16:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 6,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/836294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilvaraWilde/pseuds/SilvaraWilde
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All boys, except one, grow up. Isn’t that the way the story goes? Well, not this time. This time you will get to read the really real version. Peter Pan was not a 10-year-old boy. He was not even a boy really. And his nemesis was not a sea captain. The Lost Boys weren’t really boys either. Wendy, John, and Michael WERE children however...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Standard disclaimers apply. I do not own any rights to Peter Pan or the characters therein. They all belong to J. M. Barrie; I am merely borrowing them for a while.
> 
>  
> 
> I've loved the Peter Pan mythos as long as I can remember, but it always made me wonder things. Too many parallels between fae mythos and an over-active imagination created the fic you are about to read. This was originally written back in 2002, and someone recently got in touch with me asking if it had ever been completed.
> 
> Well...yes, and also no. I had 2 chapters beyond these 8 written, and I thought uploaded to AFF. However there appears to be no trace of chapters 9 & 10 there, and I had a harddrive failure in 2008. I attempted to write a new chapter 9, but I can't seem to find the same "voice" I used in previous chapters and don't think it is anywhere near as good as the rest of the fic. So until I am able to come up with something to do justice to the rest of the fic, it will have to end where it is.

****

Peter Pan: A Faerie Tale

_All boys, except one, grow up. Isn’t that the way the story goes? Well, not this time. This time you will get to read the really real version. Peter Pan was not a 10-year-old boy. He was not even a boy really. And his nemesis was not a sea captain. The Lost Boys weren’t really boys either. Wendy, John, and Michael WERE children however. Wait, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me start at the beginning. No, that would take longer than you have on earth to tell… Let me start simply with this:_

 

The smell of scorched earth and blood was everywhere. The charred remains of friend and foe alike littered the ground. Everywhere was a reminder of the latest battle. The latest struggle to keep the Unseelie hoards out of their home.

“This cannot go on. Our people grow weaker the longer we fight.” A voice whispered from the midst of the carnage. A slender form picked its way to the edge of the war zone. His short brown hair and usually laughing eyes, dulled now with dirt, sweat, and pain.

“Nothing seems to stop them Peter. All we’re able to do is slow them.”

The brown haired youth ran his hand through his hair distractedly. “I know Nibs. It’s almost like they found a way to twist our magic against us. If we could only find a way to change our magic they would no longer be able to kill us as easily.”

“Peter!” A younger, blonde-haired boy panted his way up the slope. “Peter you must come quickly. Your mother—“ Falling to his knees, he was wracked with a coughing fit. Wiping his mouth with the back of his right hand, blood gleamed in the faint light.

“Slightly, what’s happened? What’s wrong with Mother?” Peter knelt beside his friend, resting one hand on the other’s back; he glowed for a brief moment. Looking wearier if possible, he waited for the answer. His heart afraid it already knew.

“You should not waste your magic on me.” Slightly knocked Peter’s hand away. “Your mother waits beyond the grove at her tree. Peter, one of them got her, hurry!”

Already on his feet, Peter was running before the last word left Slightly’s mouth. Fear a bitter taste on the back of his tongue, he hurdled the bodies, rocks and branches heedlessly. Only one thought in his head. She must not die. Not before he could get to her. Not yet!

At last he reached the tree. A tall ash, planted the day his mother was born. It would die when she did, their lives linked as all the trees were to their children. His mother was a small, still shape at its base, yet he knew she still lived. The tree was still green…

“Mother.” Taking her hand in his own, eyes filling with unshed tears; he knew her wounds were beyond the greatest of their healers, let alone his own small gifts.

Her green eyes were dull with pain. Blonde hair tangled around her face, she stared up at him and tried to smile. “Peter. Do not cry son, there is not time. You must find a way around the Unseelie magic’s before all our people are lost. Look to the world above, their magic is different from ours. Perhaps there—“ she gasped, shuddering with pain, her skin turned translucent. “Perhaps…” the breath left her and she was gone.

Peter let the tears fall silently as he composed his mother’s body. _I will avenge you mother. I swear it!_

Standing, still wrapped in silent grief, he walked from the grove, twisting the magic around himself; he opened a Door and stepped through. Closing it before anyone could stop him. There alone in the moonlight of the world above, he sank to his knees once again and let the tears fall freely.

“Boy, why are you crying?” A young girl stood near. Her long brown curls tied back with a blue bow. How Peter had missed seeing her, even clouded by grief, he knew not.

He stood rapidly. Hiding his grief behind a mask, he bowed formally to her. “What is your name child?”

“Wendy Moria Angela Darling. What’s yours?”


	2. Chapter 2

“Peter Pan.” He watched her as he replied. What was a child doing outside all alone? What possible reason could she have for being in this place, at this time?

“Are you lost too? Is that why you were crying?” She took a few steps closer to him as the moon came out from behind the clouds. “Oh!” Seeing now that he was not just a slightly older child as she had thought, she stopped, eyes wide.

Peter sat down in the grass, legs crossed Indian-style and smiled in what he hoped was a reassuring way given the fact he was still covered in dirt and worse from the battle he had just fought. “Where do you live Wendy? Perhaps I can help you find the way?”

“I live with my parents and brothers near Kensington Gardens. Where do YOU live?”

Not wishing to alarm the child any more than he had already, and not wanting to explain about where on Earth, or rather Under it, he lived he said the first thing that came to him. “Second to the right and straight on till morning.” Winking as he did so to let her know he didn’t expect her to believe him“  
  
“What a funny address! Is that what they put on your letters?” She asked falling in with the game.

“I don’t get any letters.”

“Surely your Mother gets letters?”

His mask must have slipped then for impulsively she came to him and reached out hesitantly. “My mother is dead Wendy. But we should get you back to yours. I think Kensington is that way.” Standing up, he began to guide her in the darkness as easily as if it had been day.

Very soon they came to an area Wendy recognized. “There! Just down there is my street.” The house she pointed out to him was dark as though all within slept.

“Are you sure Wendy? Why isn’t anyone out looking for you?”

“Well, Mother was telling us stories about faeries and John and Michael said there was no such thing. I told them there were and that I bet they came out at night when no one was around. So they dared me to go prove it…” She looked down embarrassed. “Mother and Father didn’t know; we waited till they were sleeping.”

Peter frowned. “You know that was foolish Wendy, what if something had happened to you?”

“I know, and I didn’t even get to see a faerie, so I guess my brothers were right, they don’t exist.”

His mother’s words suddenly rang in his head. “Look to the world above” she had said, but this was just a child… How could she possibly help them?

“Wendy, if I could prove to you and your brothers that faeries and elves and such exist, would you be willing to help me?”

“How Peter? I’m only twelve, surely I couldn’t be much help to you?” Her eyes gave her away however; she very much wanted to see a faerie.

“Let’s go get your brothers first, then I’ll explain.”


	3. Chapter 3

“John! Michael! There’s a boy here who is going to teach us how to fly!” Wendy said mischievously, knowing that would wake them.

“Then I shall get up at once.” John said, not moving a muscle. Michael hadn’t seemed to hear her; he still slept soundly.

Wendy stomped her foot. “Get up right now! You were the ones who wanted proof, well I found it.”

“Oh very well.” John sat up and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “So where is this boy you were talking about?”

Wendy looked around ready to point Peter out and had to look again. No one was in the nursery except for her and her brothers. “He was right there.” She pointed to the chair their mother liked to sit in.

“Well I think you made it up so you didn’t have to admit you were wrong.”

_Meanwhile, in a quite different home under the ground…_

“Peter where did you go? We were worried.” Nibs said reproachfully as he watched Peter hurriedly changing clothes after a bath.

“I know, I’m sorry Nibs, but I don’t have time to explain right now. She’s going to be thinking she dreamed me up if I don’t get back fast. Have you seen Tink? I need him.”

“She who?” Nibs crossed his arms and gave Peter a Look that told him he wasn’t leaving till he got a good answer.

Sighing, Peter ran a hand through his hair. “I met a child in the world Above. She might be able to help us, all I have to do is prove we exist.” He grinned wryly at his friend.

“Which is why you need Tink, of course. Why didn’t I guess that in the first place. We’re in the middle of a WAR here if you hadn’t noticed Peter. This is no time to be bringing children in, it could be more than dangerous; it could be deadly.”

“I know… But I can’t help thinking of what Mother said, ‘look to the world above’, what if this girl and her brothers could think of something we can’t? I won’t take them into trouble needlessly, you know that. Besides, they have yet to agree. We’ll need all the help we can get.” He walked out of the room determinedly.

“Tink is in the same place he always is lately, mending what he can.”

Ready to burst into tears, Wendy sits on her bed. “I did NOT dream it! He was real. I don’t know where he went—“

“To get some proof of course. You didn’t think I’d really just vanish on you, did you Wendy?” Peter stepped out of the shadows of the balcony, another smaller form following him as all three children turned towards him.

“John, Michael.” He nodded respectfully towards them. “I am Peter Pan, and this... is Tink.” Moving up beside him was a boy a little shorter than Wendy, with blonde hair and blue eyes, and…the boys rubbed their eyes, wings? Tink pulled faces at them and wandered off to look around the room as Peter talked, sometimes walking, sometimes flying.

“Tink is obviously a fairy. Do you know anything about faeries?” Peter asked the children. Tink rolled his eyes in mock disgust at the play on words. The children of course would not be able to know what Peter really meant when he said the word ‘fairy’. Not yet anyhow…

“I do! When the first baby laughed the first time it broke into pieces and they all went skipping about and those were faeries.” Michael said quickly. Tink made a rude noise.

“Well, that’s not quite right but we’ll get into that another time. There used to be a faerie for every child, but children think they know so much these days they’ve stopped believing. If you disbelieve in something enough, it’s possible to make it disappear. Usually.” Peter’s voice was sad. “Though some of the lucky ones were able to escape to my world, quite a lot of creatures are no more.” Tink settled down at Peters feet, idly looking at his nails. “So, do you believe?” The siblings looked at each other then nodded vigorously. “Good!”

“Peter? You said there was something we could do to help? What is it?”

“You see Wendy, there are good creatures like Faeries, and Unicorns, bad creatures like Goblins, and Boggarts, and ones who can go either way, like Dragons and Elves. They’re separated into two Courts, the Seelie and the Unseelie. Usually we are able to thwart them, not immediately, but eventually. This time however, they have found a way to turn our magic against us. We need to find out how to work around that, and to do that, we must learn new magics. We’ve been apart from humans so long; your magic and ours are different. Would you be willing to teach us your magic?”

“Wait, are you saying you aren’t human?” John looked at Peter skeptically. “You LOOK human to me.”

For answer, Peter moved close enough for them to see his ears. They were delicately pointed at the tips, and his eyes were slit-pupiled like a cats. “I am not mortal John, I never have been. I am an Elf.”

Wendy was still thinking about what Peter had said earlier. “That’s perfectly awful Peter! But we can’t do magic. How could we teach you?”

“We just need the stories of magic Wendy, you don’t even need to go anywhere, just be willing to write down all the stories you know, we’ll see what we can learn from that.”

“I know such lots of stories Peter, it would take too long to write them down. It would be far easier to tell them to you.”

He shook his head. “I might not re-tell them correctly Wendy, we only have a very short chance with this.”

She looked at her brothers, asking a silent question. Slowly they nodded. “Then take us with you Peter. We shall tell them ourselves, it will be faster that way and more people can hear them than read them.”

“Let us go at once! Before mother and father wake.” John added.


	4. Chapter 4

Peter could of course have led the children from the bedroom any number of ways. However, he chose to do it the simplest. The fact that it would seem the most magical was beside the point. Closing his eyes briefly, he opened the Door to his world.

“I shall go through first, then you three, and then Tink. It will not be as beautiful as it once was I am afraid… We were attacked again only recently. I will not fault any of you if you wish to turn back.”

The children did not even have to look at each other this time. They had made up their minds to help, and help they would. Peter nodded silently and stepped through the Door. It was barely visible, no more than a slight shimmering hanging in the air before them. John followed him and then Michael, Wendy and Tink.

The destruction seemed terrible to the children. Wendy, the eldest at twelve, tried to seem brave for her younger siblings. John’s eyes were wide as he stared around at the once-lovely realm. They did not know how it should have looked, but it was quite obvious what did not belong.

There was very little green where they had come out of the Door. The smell of scorched earth, blood, and things the children could not name hung thickly in the air. One of the distant figures approached them slowly. “Peter! Are these the children you spoke of?” Nibs stopped in front of the small group and examined them silently. The children were all still in their nightclothes. Wendy wore nothing but a long white nightgown, and the blue ribbon in her hair, the boys were in pajamas. Hardly appropriate attire for the battlefield they would have to walk through.

“Nibs, this is Wendy, John and Michael. Children, this is Nibs, he is my second.”

“A pleasure to meet you Nibs.” Wendy curtsied as her brothers bowed.

“Would that we could have met under different circumstances.” As Nibs spoke to the children, Tink glided around and slid his arms around the other boy’s waist. Leaning his head against Nibs’ chest, his wings relaxing and hanging down his back; this was the first time the children had seen him when he was actually still. He hadn’t stopped moving once while in their world, indeed, he hadn’t stopped moving even in this one until now. John and Michael looked curiously confused, while Wendy’s eyes opened wide in surprise. However, none of them mentioned any of the things they were thinking.

“Peter? You said you wished to hear stories. The stories of magic from our world?” Wendy asked softly, trying to bring them all back to the reason why they were here. When she received his nod, she continued. “Who do you wish us to tell them to? And do you know what kinds of stories would help most? I know such lots of them and not all the magic is the same…”

“You can start with Tink, Nibs and I. If we hear something that sounds like it might help we we can gather more people. As for what kinds of stories…” Peter shrugged and spread his hands. “I don’t even know what kinds of magic your people can do much less what kind may help us. Just start with the stories you know well, maybe pick a story with different magic each time you tell one?”

“Alright. Then let’s start with ‘Cinderella.’”


	5. Chapter 5

Wendy and the boys couldn’t say they were having fun exactly, as that would be disrespectful; considering how many of Peters people had died and been hurt. But that is almost exactly what they were doing. They had moved in with Peter as he had the most room of the boys, as Wendy called them, and had all but forgotten they had ever lived elsewhere.

It was the most entrancing for Wendy of course because she had so much to do. When she wasn’t telling stories, she was helping to mend clothing, or running off after one or another of the boys to have what they always referred to as ‘adventures.’ They weren’t always real adventures of course, more along the paths of make believe. However the lines between make believe and real weren’t so carefully drawn in this realm of Peters.

It didn’t truly begin to worry Wendy until she realized that John only vaguely remembered their parents, and he remembered them more like strangers he might once have known. Michael was worse however, he was quite willing to believe Wendy herself might actually be his mother; and that Peter was his father!

She tried to help them remember by quizzing them. Such things like ‘What color were mother’s eyes?’, ‘Which was taller, father or mother?’, ‘Describe mother’s laugh’, ‘Describe mother’s party dress’ only to realize that she had been forgetting too.

It was on one of those remembering days when the idyllic world they had come to know changed. It started off subtly at first. Little shivers ran through the trees, the peculiar lighting of the place faded and shadows stole over all making it cold. The meadow the children played in that had seemed such a welcoming place, now seemed formidable and unfriendly.

It was not that night had come you see, but that something as dark as night had come. No, worse. It had not come yet, but had sent the shiver ahead of itself to tell all of its coming. What could it be?

Crowding in upon her thoughts came images of the destruction that she had seen and heard of when first they came to Peters land. Of the creatures that had caused it, no one would tell them, thinking they would become much too frightened. Of course she should have roused her sleeping brothers at once. But she was still a child after all, and frightened, surely she thought, this could not be the only place that had gone to darkness. Peter or Nibs or someone would come to them soon. But none came, and it got still colder. She could hear something now, a kind of high chittering, not the sound an animal would make, more like the sound of some strange insect.

It was at this very moment Peter appeared in their midst. He spoke a single hushed word: “Unseelie…” and then louder: “The Unseelie! They have come again! Nibs! Slightly! Ware! Everyone to me!”

Before the last note of his ringing cry had ended not only had his people come, but so had the first of the monsters.

Wendy, John and Michael were passed from hand to hand to the very furthest away point of the fighting. Thus they glimpsed only bits and pieces of the things. It was like all the nightmare creatures they had ever heard of had been given flesh and come to life, and they were all headed in one direction. Towards Peter.

It was easy to spot Peter at first, for he held a glowing sword aloft. He would be the first to meet these things, and the last to retreat. This was fitting as he was their leader and would suffer none to do what he would not do himself.

The Unseelie hoards descended upon them in a horrendous rush. Yet Peter and the rest held fast. They had learned some from the stories Wendy had told them, but would it be enough? Wendy found her eyes were wet and her cheeks too. She did not remember crying but of course she must have, for the sword, the glowing sword could be seen no more. She had had to turn her eyes away frightened by the destruction she saw, and when she looked back…the Unseelie were in retreat, but of Peter there was no trace.


	6. Chapter 6

“Peter?” Wendy whispered. No one seemed to notice. It had been only seconds since the last of the Unseelie fled, yet it seemed far longer. Getting shakily to her feet, she began to move carefully though the carnage towards the last place she was sure she had seen Peter.

 

All around her the people of Peter’s land were moving, checking those who were alive or dead and dying. How could they not realize Peter wasn’t among them?

 

“Wendy!” Nibs ran up beside her and swung her around. “We did it! We fought them off! It’s all thanks to you and your brothers.”

 

“But Nibs! Peter. Where is Peter?” blinking back still more useless tears, Wendy watched as Nibs’ face drained of color.

 

“He’s not here? He must be here, I saw him just moments ago. I’m sure of it…” Turning away, he began to hurry towards the front of the battle line. A golden glint caught Wendy’s eye as she followed after him. Stooping down, she caught hold of an edge and pulled.

 

“No, oh no. Please let it not be true.” There in her hands was Peter’s sword.

 

The once-gleaming sword was dimmed now, all the magic seemed lost from it. Under the blood and grime, the metal looked like nothing more than hammered gold. For Peter, it had seemed to be weightless, a flashing faerie blade made of the finest elven steel and lit up from the inside by a magic all its own. Now it lay lifeless in her hands, a mute testament to the fact that Peter was gone.

 

As Wendy looked down at the blade in her hands in silent horror, Nibs dropped to the ground beside her and began to dig through the bodies frantically. He was soon joined by Slightly and Tootles, neither of which looked like they should be up and moving around, but all grimly determined to find their leader. It was a futile effort, it took them nearly an hour, but they cleared everything away down to the dirt for many feet in all directions.

 

“He isn’t here. He isn’t here! They took him, and we have no way to track them or follow.” Nibs sagged down in despair. The feeling was catching, one by one the boys looked away trying to control their grief. Thus only Wendy noticed the flicker along the edge of the blade she still held. It was a tiny glimmer, so barely there that if she had blinked she would have thought she had imagined it. Blinking away her tears, she lifted the sword higher, within inches of her face and breathed one word: “Peter.”

 

As if in answer, the light flashed again, slightly stronger this time and hope took hold in her breast. Could the sword lead them to Peter? And if it could, would it be in time? She gripped the hilt tighter in her hands and said in a slightly louder and firmer voice: “Peter.” The blade flashed again, then went dark. “Will you... Can you, lead us to Peter?” The boys were looking up at her now, confusion on their faces, but the blade, the once shining blade, responded. It lit up with a flash and a crackle, not as bright as it had for Peter, but fully bright enough that you could tell it was glowing from within.

 

“I know you will not permit me to go, I do not know how to fight, and would most likely slow you down. But it seems willing to lead you if you can follow it.” Hands trembling only slightly, Wendy had no wish to release her last link to Peter and an even greater wish not to stay behind, she offered the blade across her palms to Nibs.

 

The moment he touched it, the light went out. When he removed his hand, leaving it with Wendy, the light came back. So it was for Slightly and Tootles, Peter’s blade it seemed would only lead them if Wendy carried it. They had no choice, to rescue Peter, Wendy must come with them, but so many were hurt. Slightly had a cracked rib, Tootles was missing a finger, and Tink, poor Tink had one wing bent at an unnatural angle. Nibs was hurt the least, bruises mostly and one cut across his left cheekbone. But they had not time for the fae healers to fix them up, every second they wasted could mean Peter’s life.

 

Forming a half circle around Wendy, they set out past the war zone, past the boundaries of their home. Into lands unclaimed by any creature of good, and right into the heart of the Unseelie lands. Three fae warriors, one fairy, and a twelve-year-old mortal girl-child. Would it be enough?


	7. Chapter 7

It seemed like they had been walking for ages, but it was hard to tell as time passed even more strangely in these unclaimed lands than they did in the rest of the world below. The golden sword guided them, gleaming brightly when they went in the right direction, and fading to nothing when they turned the wrong way. Nibs was leading them with Wendy just behind to warn if they turned off the path the sword pointed to. Slightly and Tootles were on either side of her with Tink bringing up the rear. They would protect her to the best of their ability for besides being their only hope of finding Peter, she was still a child.

 

At last they came to what might have once been a grove of healthy trees. Now the trees were black and twisted things. Not as if they were what nightmares were made of, but the actual physical nightmare themselves. Not a single leaf graced their branches, not an animal or insect stirred beneath their limbs, and yet there was an eerie noise that seemed to come from inside the trees themselves. Were they… talking? As the five drew nearer, they could make out one thing beneath the trees. It was a cage, the bars were white and black, they could not yet tell what it was made from, and there appeared to be a figure laying in the bottom of the cage. Neither the figure nor the trees moved as they drew nearer.

 

Nibs motioned the others to stay back and moved the last few feet on his own. The cage was made of bones and wood, he could see no lock or door which meant it must be magical in its own right. The figure… the figure was Peter, but he did not move, he barely breathed. And how could they be sure it was Peter? It would not be unlike their enemies to leave a seeming of Peter to slow them down, or even to kill off some of them. He chewed his lip and paced around the cage but did not touch the bars. There had to be a way to tell. There just had to be!

 

As he completed the circuit of the cage, he saw Wendy and his friends again. Perhaps the sword could help them? But would it work if Wendy did not wield it? He walked back to the group and held out his hands in silence, so far the trees had not moved, but would they if they made too much noise? Wendy frowned slightly as she handed over the sword, she did not know what he had in mind, but something told her not to ask questions just now. Even Tink was silent and still. All waited to see what would happen.

 

Nibs returned to the cage and moved to face Peter’s head. Holding the hilt of the sword firmly, he stretched out as far as possible and allowed the tip to come to rest on one of the bone bars. Nothing happened for a few seconds, and then there was a loud BOOM! as the bone exploded into dust. No piece was large enough to hurt Nibs or the possible Peter, but the gap in the bars was not large enough to pull the figure out either.

 

The trees swayed uneasily, reaching out questing branches to feel out what had happened. Nibs ducked and rolled across the ground barely ahead of them, scraping one elbow in the process. The trees twisted and groped but felt nothing but the cage, when they finally settled again, Nibs went back and repeated the process. By the third bar, the sword was quite warm and a foul burning odor permeated everything around them. Unfortunately, while the magic of the sword could break into the cage, there was some spell on the cage itself that would not allow Nibs to reach into the gap he had made. His hand simply stopped as if it was meeting a wall of glass. None of the others were able to pass it either, and while the sword could pass through, the moment their fingers were close enough, they were stopped. Peter had still not awoken or even moved.

 

As they looked at each other helplessly, Wendy crept up to the cage. She reached out expecting to find the same barrier the others had felt, and nearly fell into the cage herself when her questing hand met nothing but air. Tootles had to leap forward and grasp her waist to keep her from touching the bars, and when he had a good grip, she grabbed the wrist of the figure in the bottom of the cage and started pulling him out. He was heavier than he looked, but enough of him was soon past the barrier that the others could take over hauling him out.

 

He looked like Peter, and the sword responded when they laid it in his hand by lighting up as bright as day. But nothing woke him. Fearing to take too long where they were and have company, they had to carry him home and hope he woke up on the way. Only he did not. None of the fae healers could tell how to wake him, they simply said he seemed to be under a spell of sleep.

 

Wendy and her brothers had been in the world below for more than a year according to the way time flowed there, and Nibs thought they should return home soon. He didn’t have Peter’s ability to open a door on a specific time in the world above, so he could not tell them how much time had passed for their family. It could be anywhere from an hour, to 50 years. Wendy didn’t care how long it had been, she did not wish to leave until Peter had awoken, but Nibs was firm, in the morning they would return home.

 

Late that night, or perhaps it was early that morning, Wendy crept from her bed and made her way to Peter’s room. A small light, much like a nightlight, hung in the air over his bed so that if he should wake alone, he would see he was safe. She stood staring at his sleeping face in silence for many minutes before speaking barely above a whisper.

 

“People say that you can hear us when you’re in a coma if we talk to you. I hope that’s true of this sleep as well. Nibs is sending us home in the morning, he says there isn’t anything else we can do here and it isn’t safe. But I don’t want to go. I miss Mother and Father, I do, but I love it here. Even with the wars and bad things, and… I don’t want to leave you. I know I’m just a child, only twelve, but I’m almost thirteen. And in a few more of my worlds years I’ll be an adult. Please Peter, please, will you let me come back when I’m eighteen? Even only for the summer, I can… I can do the spring cleaning!” she waited for a noise, a movement, something and anything, but there was no change in the form in the bed.

 

Wendy didn’t understand why it hurt so much, the thought of leaving and never seeing Peter again, in all of her nearly thirteen years, she had never felt like this. Tears dripped silently down her cheeks and she stooped quickly and kissed him lightly on the lips before hurrying from the room. Thus she did not see the flicker of his eyelids, or hear the sudden deeper breath he took, or the whisper of a word: “Wendy.”


	8. Chapter 8

It had been an interesting return for the Darling children. Nibs hadn’t quite gotten the time right, they returned to their world 6 weeks after they had left it. There was much crying and hugging and Wendy never could quite get her parents to believe where they had been for so long. After a while she just stopped trying, but she never forgot the adventures they had had. As the years passed, John and Michael started remembering Peter and his world as though it was a story they had been told once, they stopped believing. But Wendy…

 

Every year on the anniversary of the night she first met Peter, she would sit in the window seat in her room with the window wide open and stare at the night sky hoping he would remember her and appear. But it never happened. During the day she would walk through the woods where she first saw him and wonder if she would ever see him again. Years passed. Wendy grew up, though she never put aside her dreams. In the spring of her twentieth year, her father had finally had enough and decreed that she must put away her “childish fancies”. It was time for her to finally become an adult, marry, and have a family of her own.

 

She was dragged to parties where eligible young men were also dragged, and finally a choice was made. Wendy didn’t wish to marry, but having no choice she picked the one she thought she could get along with best. On the day of her marriage, she wore a white dress with a pink sash. Her mother cried, her father looked proud. John and Michael stood with her husband-to-be’s best men. All was in readiness and as Wendy waited outside the church for the wedding march to begin, she could not help the tear that fell from one eye. ‘Oh Peter, I wish I could see you again…” she thought.

 

Like all the other times she had done it, she whispered just under her breath, “Peter. Peter. Peter.” Knowing that this would be the last and final time she could dream about him and the World Below. After she was married she would have to do as her father said and put away childish thoughts. As the last word fell from her lips, it seemed as if the very air held it’s breath. But Wendy did not notice. The doors were beginning to open in front of her, and she could just hear the Wedding March start to play. As her father stepped up and placed her hand on his arm, she thought she heard a strange sound. Almost like the buzzing of faery wings…

 

Wrinkling her brow in puzzlement, she took a quick glance around, not really daring to hope, but quite unable to ignore the sound. There, to her left she saw a movement. Stretching up on her toes and peering around her father, she saw a hint of movement, a flickering blur as if some large winged thing was hiding behind a tree in the parking lot. Not giving herself or her family time to think, Wendy dropped her father’s arm. She gathered a fold of her white dress in her hand and took off hurrying towards where she thought she had perhaps seen Tinkerbell!

 

Vaguely she heard her father shouting behind her, but she was too focused on not letting the flicker out of her sight to care. Arriving at the tree, she slowed and looked all around but could see no one. Shoulders drooping she dropped her dress and looked sadly around. Just as she was about to give up, she had a thought and looked upwards. And what did she see but Tink perched on a branch of the tree hands on his hips, and Peter sitting beside him! Neither looked a day older than her memory of them.

 

“Peter! You remembered! It’s been so many years I thought I would never see you again…”

 

Peter looked a little sheepish. “It seems that the spell I was under fiddled a little with my time sense, I had meant to return and see you a year or two after you came back here, but it didn’t quite work out that way…” Tink snorted, “What he isn’t saying is that it was you who broke the spell on him. And he’s wondering if you might be able to fix the jumble his magic has become since he woke up.”

 

Wendy’s eyes lit up, Peter needed her help again, that meant she’d get to spend time with him and the others in the World Below. But the sounds of family and friends were getting closer now, if they didn’t leave soon, Wendy would be dragged back to the church to be Married, and then all hope of escaping to the magical lands would be over.

 

“I don’t know if I can help, but I’d love to see everyone again. Only, I was supposed to be married today, and when I saw Tink I kinda ran off before the ceremony. So if you want me to come with you, we need to go…like right now!”

 

Peter’s jaw dropped briefly, and she couldn’t quite decipher the look in his eyes as he leaned forward on the branch he still sat on. “I didn’t mean to interrupt your wedding Wendy, I don’t wish to be a bother, you’ve done so much for us already I’m sure I can figure this out eventually.”

 

“But Peter, I don’t _want_ to get married! It was all father’s idea, he never believed me about the World Below, said that if I were a proper married woman with children of my own, that I would stop making up fairy stories. I’d much rather come visit with you and the others, please Peter, let me help?”

 

A glance towards the rapidly approaching people seemed to make up Peter’s mind. He stood and leaped lightly from the tree, Tink fluttering down after him, and with a quick wave of his hand and a half turn, a glowing Door appeared. Tink hurried through, and Peter took Wendy’s hand. As they stepped through the door, Wendy looked back over her shoulder briefly, and saw her father’s startled face, and then they were through and in the World Below once again.


End file.
